Death at a Funeral

I have walked out of exactly 2 movies in my life. I am a picky movie watcher and spent a lot of time watching movies for free when I worked for Landmark. The first was Julien Donkeyboy. I don't remember why I walked out, just that I did. The second was Death at a Funeral. I remember why I walked out of that film, oh boy, do I remember.

It was somewhere around when a tallish guy got in a physical altercation with a dwarf that was supposed to have been his dead father's lover. It was attempting to create an awkward situation that was so awkward, it was funny. It didn't succeed, it just felt really, really contrived and pandering to some sort of sophomoric frat boy humour community that clearly would never have come to see this film in the first place (Mr. Darcy is in it? It's playing at that obscure theatre where my mother dragged me to see The Piano? Come on guys, let's go!). Up until the gay dwarf fight, I hadn't noticed any attempts at jokes in the movie and neither had anyone else in the audience. I really kept thinking that we were watching the first 10 or 20 minutes of the film, waiting for it to warm up before the hilarity would start, until I looked at my phone and realised the movie was already half over and it was probably time to leave.

It's odd that Ewen Bremner was in both of those films, because I sort of like him. I also count Dirty, Rotten, Scoundrels as one of my all time favourites, which was supposedly made by the same people as the above described waste of time and celluloid. Anyway. They've decided, in all seriousness, to remake it.

I can only assume that the new version, which they're strangely calling the "American" version, despite the first one being made mostly by Americans, is to try and rectify the mistakes of the past with a new cast (Chris Rock) and new setting ("Urban America" as opposed to "Upper Class England") Unfortunately, the cast and setting was not the problem in the last version.

***

I did see a movie that I loved the other day, called Mary and Max. Narrated by Barry Humphries and voiced by Philip Seymour Hoffman and Toni Collette. Here is the preview: